(http://www.the-idler.com)
The orchestras are playing better than ever. The conductors are whirling all over the globe. The soloists shine. But something is drastically wrong in the classical music world.
Audiences haven't grown since 1980, and they are aging fast. Expenses are up. Many orchestras are giving up the ghost or fighting to stay alive. "Good music" radio stations are disappearing. Sales of classical music recordings now represent less than 3.5 percent of the market.
Beneath its pure and genteel surface, the classical music world is struggling to survive. A generation of beautifully trained musicians cannot find work, while the next generation �� even larger �� is pouring into the profession.
How did this happen? What should be done? What can be done?
1. Mystery of the locked room. Whodunit?
Short answer: the friends of "good" music.
The longer answer will detail the roles of all those well�meaning "music lovers" who have locked themselves into a mausoleum. It houses institutions that flourished for decades, that have absorbed an inordinate amount of public and private charity �� and that now appear to be imprisoned in a basically Victorian culture.
In nature's Darwinian universe, all organisms must adapt to new conditions or die. In the cultural universe of the past, a similar mechanism prevailed.Artistic forms and styles evolved according to the society's needs, tempered by the available technological, and financial resources. This evolution was the unquestioned bedrock in music: Songs, dance rhythms, liturgical sounds, and the varied realms of concert music and opera �� all tolerated new works while gradually shedding the old.
But around the turn of the twentieth century, the musical universe exploded. It grew spectacularly, with vigorous novas crackling outside the concert music scene. Orchestras had swelled during the late 19th century as composers wrote complex, elaborate scores. Popular songs were propagated not only by cheap musical instruments and sheet music, but also by mechanical pianos, a proliferation of bands, and music halls. For the first time in human history, the wide public faced delectable, unprecedented choices �� live music or recordings, making music at home on an inexpensive piano or an evening out at a concert, a hotel ballroom, or a rowdy dance hall. Within a few years, the music world was swept from gentle, gradual evolution to violent upheaval, where new entertainments competed vigorously with traditional arts.
Soon, the concert world was beset by enemies on several fronts. From outside, ragtime, jazz, and popular sounds seduced potential audiences. From inside, rebellious composers assaulted the old forms with innovative systems for creating fresh music, difficult music requiring virtuoso performers and attentive listeners. The live concert or opera itself was under siege from mechanical reproduction �� recordings and radio, which bypassed the genteel culture of concert hall and opera house.
Against this onslaught, the genteel culture enveloped itself in the exclusive mantle of Art, High Art, and slowly began to petrify. Over the years, new concert music found diminishing opportunities. Instead, the music which had been new in the 19th century stayed on in the permanent repertoire, like a scintillating weekend guest who settles in for the rest of the summer. Meanwhile, musicians greeted contemporary "serious" music reluctantly, and audiences generally detested it. New composers fought bitterly for a hearing, and, even more important, for recording and play on the radio, which had become the principal resources for reaching audiences.
As the concert world reflexively clung to its 18th and 19th century patrimony, all sorts of popular music was attracting a vast audience. Hardly an American was unaware of jazz during the 1920s, or of swing during the 1930s. Many millions rushed to buy the recordings of popular crooners and bands, of country yodelers and strummers, of blues wailers and rock shouters. The music industry developed into a gigantic creature, with tentacles reaching into film, radio, and television. Its stars filled football stadiums with raucous fans, and its marketing power surged around the world.
2. Too much of a good thing
There is no shortage of talented, magnificently trained musicians �� but fewer than 10 percent of all graduates of even the most prestigious institutions can find careers in music. Yet, the throng of musicians and composers continues to grow. More than 82,000 music majors are currently enrolled in colleges and universities, but in 1995, only 12,800 degrees were awarded, as students realized that their dreams of a musical career would never materialize. Orchestras currently provide only 6,500 full�time jobs, and music faculties about 8,400; hundreds of musicians contend for the few openings available each year.
Those who teach music at universities and conservatories feel no responsibility to limit the number of students they train. Indeed, all their funding systems foster continuing and expanding the population explosion of musicians and composers. More students mean more faculty, greater prestige for the institution, more money for new programs. A proliferation of competitions and prizes cloaks the students' bitter struggle for success in a veneer of approval and encouragement.
The handsome rewards for the few who attain a concert career mask the plight of the many �� ambitious youngsters who have devoted their entire youth, and big chunks of their parents' savings, to studying music. They attend prestigious schools, study with renowned coaches, acquire fabled instruments, only to settle �� and gladly! �� for a spot in a third�tier orchestra.
Given the glut of excellent musicians, there is no shortage of musical performances in this country. All but the best�endowed symphony orchestras may be struggling, but other kinds of music�makers are flourishing in every corner of this country. Quartets, duets, woodwind and brass ensembles, pianists, choruses, and chamber orchestras, whether amateur or professional, insure that those with a taste for classical music are served.
Music presenters offer a lively competition to local groups by developing subscription series of performances by touring soloists or ensembles. Music festivals, college presentations, and summer pops concerts add another dimension to many areas' musical menu. The audience, however, is small and shrinking. Only 13 per cent of those surveyed by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1992 said they had attended at least one classical music performance in the previous year. The highest percentages, were 55 to 64 years old (17%), had attended graduate school (36%), and had incomes over $50,000 (23%).
The audience is well�served, but the performer faces a lifelong struggle to make a living while making music. To wait quietly for "discovery" by the world is, as in all the arts, to invite obscurity while laboring at an assortment of odd non�music jobs. To succeed, musicians must be intensely entrepreneurial. They must get to know everybody in their field and are happy to be interviewed even by a writer lacking a book contract. They play everything �� jazz, show tunes, oldies, hymns, klezmer �� anything that willkeep their skills sharp and their bread buttered. If necessary, they will even encourage composers to write music for their instrument; lacking much of a repertoire for his contrabass, for example, Bertram Turetzky has commissioned more than 300 pieces.
3. The band plays on ... and on
Operas and orchestras are the costliest civic ornaments in the U.S. While the audience for opera has been slowly growing, orchestras have not increased their audiences since 1980. Meanwhile, orchestra expenses have skyrocketed, as players demand full�time seasons, generous health and retirement benefits, and lengthy paid vacations. While their demands appear unreasonable, orchestra players suffer from intense frustration. Having undergone years �� often decades �� of intensive training, having honed performance skills far beyond the abilities of their 19th century counterparts, having dreamed of a career as soloists or small ensemble players, they are now part of a quasi�industrial enterprise. Without even an illusion of autonomy, they are merely musical worker�bees, with no choice as to when, where, what, or how they play. Understandably, their resentment fuels angry labor negotiations.
In the past, American orchestras eked out their budgets with substantial recording fees. Now, with classical music commanding less than 3 1/2 percent of market share, recording companies dip into their huge inventories to reissue past performances or hire European musicians at lower fees.
When cities insist on their own orchestra as a focus of civic pride, the results can be catastrophic. Egged on by the Chamber of Commerce to provide a "world�class" musical ensemble, the orchestra board plunges into reckless year�round commitments for more concerts than the community can support, a larger and more expensive hall than the orchestra can fill, exorbitant part�time conductors and one�time soloists, and over�ambitious fund�raising goals. This road has led directly to the grave for many orchestras, including those in Oakland, Louisville, New Orleans, and San Diego.
Meanwhile, the orchestral repertoire churns endlessly through the baroque and romantic masterpieces. A 1994 survey by the American Symphony Orchestra League found that nearly one�third of the typical repertoire featured pieces by Top Ten composers: Bach, Beethoven, Berlioz, Brahms, Dvorak, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner.
The great outpouring of 20th century music remains virtually untouched; hardly any music written after about 1940 has found more than an occasional �� unloved, dutiful �� performance. Orchestras already struggling to make ends meet hesitate to shock their aging subscribers with more than a token amount of experimental music. Back in the 1960s, Leonard Bernstein warned that the orchestral world was becoming "a museum of music." Not much has changed, and today musicologists describe a situation that would havebaffled Johann Sebastian Bach: "What? They're still playing my music?" he might ask upon observing the current scene. "Why don't they have their own music?"
4. Sound educations?
Many orchestras and their defenders blame their plight on the decline of music education in the public schools. Certainly, the average concert�goer today knows far less about music than his or her counterpart of even 75 years ago. Then, virtually every listener knew how to read music, probably owned a piano, and knew how to play it, even though few schools included music in the curriculum. During the succeeding decades, a great crusade brought music into public schools, especially high schools, where bands or even orchestras proliferated. Naively, the crusaders sincerely believed that such missionary work would create new generations of music lovers.
Colleges churned out music teachers, whose mission was to guide young people toward "good" music, and away from corrupting popular sound. Unfortunately, the training of music teachers stressed teaching methods at the expense of content. Few public school music teachers possessed solid background in music history, theory, or performance, nor did public school administrators expect much more than an enthusiastic, noisy marching band to emerge from their efforts.
Still, the notion persists that young people should be "exposed" to music, and many classical music organizations expend large sums on "outreach" to public schools. Research does not indicate that this heroic effort shows any success. Indeed, today's young people have been exposed to �� and are familiar with �� more music and more kinds of music than any youths in history. They swim in a sea of music; no youthful activity is unaccompanied by music, and youngsters under age 20 spend more money than any other age group on popular concerts and recordings.
Nevertheless, young people generally are disinterested in the "good" music to which their elders have so diligently tried to expose them. The audiences for classical music are strikingly mature �� and they are getting older. And even these audiences seldom play an instrument or know much more about music than can be learned from reading the liner notes on a CD or repeatedly listening to a well�known concerto or symphony. Indeed, many of these patrons are not in the hall because of overwhelming need to hear music, but rather because attendance enhances their social status, is good for their business, or identifies them as cultured individuals.
In addition to training music teachers for public schools, college and university music departments, along with specialized conservatories, train most of this country's professional musicians and composers. Fortunately, some of the graduating throng find work in Hollywood, in playing or creating popular music, in recording studios, or, in a pinch, writing tunes forcommercials or television shows. These are not activities likely to find their way into the resume, even though they are far more lucrative than attempting a concert music career.
Like all the arts lodged in higher education, music departments suffer from specialization and fragmentation. Despite its tiny, aging, elitist audience, classical music dominates these departments, with jazz only reluctantly admitted. The most popular kinds of music are not taught and sometimes even forbidden. Increasingly since the end of the Second World War, the college or university music department has become the primary refuge of the serious music composer. Here, sheltered from the slings and arrows of audiences and critics hostile to experimental music, composers have developed a network of competitions, festivals, and recitals basically for their peers. "Who Cares If You Listen?" defiantly asked one such composer.
5. Those Good Gray Music Gurus
Because the average audience's familiarity with music comes from passively listening to recordings rather than actively playing an instrument, critics have acquired a unprecedented influence. While a critic's enthusiasm may not materially increase attendance in the concert hall, a critic's persistent disapproval turns audiences off. Most critics, therefore, try to be generous to local music organizations, especially since their own livelihood may be at stake if an institution falters.
Now that the standard repertoire has been performed innumerable times, critics seldom discuss the music itself. Who, after all, would dare to fault the saintly Beethoven or the extravagant prodigy Mozart? Hardly a critic would point out that even these geniuses occasionally repeated themselves or �� God forbid! �� had a bad day. Instead, critics dwell on the minutiae of performance, especially on whether the performance faithfully hewed to the composer's intentions. Often, the critic compares the performance to landmark recordings of the past, chilling a conductor's or soloist's attempt at a new interpretation.
Newspaper music critics have a strong stake in the success of local music organizations. If they fail, the critic's job might be downsized into a part�time position. Furthermore, the newspaper ownership considers local music organizations, especially orchestras, as an attractive local amenity to be promoted, like sports teams. A pesky critic is unwelcome.
As a result, critics are as firmly entrenched in the past as the performances they review. They see nothing strange in the ritual of the concert hall, where Victorian demeanor and dress prevail. Not only the music, but the manners and attire smack of a time when good music was scarce, when glamorous, willful virtuosi toured in private railroad cars, accompanied by an adoring retinue and a personal piano, and, most important, when great performances were unavailable on radio or recording. Today's critics willingly enforce esoteric etiquette, scolding audiences for arriving late or leaving early, for applauding in the wrong places, for coughing and squirming. They see nothing wrong in musical ensembles, whether string quartets or giant orchestras, that include few women and even fewer African�Americans. Each review reeks of unspoken assumptions: that this music is the most refined that ever was or ever will be produced; that such music can be savored only in an atmosphere of utmost formality, the musicians formally dressed, the audience attentive and adoring; that only white males can properly be conductors; that this concert, indeed, is a religious rite requiring reverential decorum.
Like most discussions of American culture, the tone of musical dialogue is set around the northeast. The models for how music criticism is written are the five (white) men at The New York Times. Understandably, they (and colleagues writing for the newspaper's cultural pages) assume that New York �� and only New York �� is the center of the cultural universe, and greet any cultural activity elsewhere with surprised condescension. "Unlikely as it sounds," wrote Bruce Weber in article published April 14, 1998, "Bozeman (Montana) offers a good example of the survivalist mentality that one finds among artists in cities throughout the country, where, like desert flowers, the arts manage to bloom without the presumed�to�be�necessary life sustaining elements of a national spotlight and available money."
In addition to waning newspaper criticism, public discussion of classical music has drastically declined. Until the 1930s, several periodicals focused on various aspects of the music scene. Near the turn of the century, and on into the 1920s, magazines of general interest frequently carried articles about music; often, they were illustrated with musical examples, which most readers could follow. Music criticism was by no means the exclusive province of experts: George Bernard Shaw at the turn of the century wrote memorable reviews for a London magazine, and H.L. Mencken, during the 1920s, did not require an advanced degree in musicology to share with readers his outspoken views on Wagner and Brahms.
6. Seeing Stars
The recent nationwide tour of Australian pianist David Helfgott, whose story was the basis of the movie Shine, highlights a new wrinkle in concert promotion: The soap opera soloist. Here we have fame wedded to tragic disability, the artist as a victim of ailments physical or mental, of racial or religious persecution, of a family's hardship or pathology. The quality of the performance hardly matters, because the masses who attend the triumphant victim's concerts have no equipment for judging its worth, beyond compassion and sensation�seeking.
The best�attended concerts feature the best�known soloists, and what do they play? Whatever they have recorded on their latest CD. Tickets can runover $100 each for what is merely a promotional tour. The "Three Tenors" stadium extravaganzas fall into this category.
Surprise! Star soloists do not augment orchestras' revenues; they cost. Plenty. Even when sold out, even when generously underwritten, the concert with the Big Name cannot break even, largely because the Big Name's fees have gone through the roof. Many concert organizers still believe in the Big Name's coattails �� that the listeners he or she attracts will come to future concerts without a Big Name. But they don't.
Earlier in this century, classical stars often had their feet planted firmly on Broadway or in Hollywood, while aspiring to the concert hall. George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein gathered their enthusiastic concert audiences by writing song and dance scores, and movie music and starred themselves in the concert hall.
7. More music and fewer listeners
Anyone who has listened carefully to the extravagant music and orchestration of the late 19th century realizes that music, like painting and literature, had to evolve into modernism. The old forms had reached their ultimate development; in an age of science, experiment in all the arts was the order of the day. But unlike visual artists, the composer is helpless without performers. The music he or she creates on the page must find musicians to bring it to life �� and audiences who want to hear it. Unlike innovators in the visual arts, the explorers of new concert music gathered few enthusiastic patrons.
American composers have had a particularly difficult time in getting a hearing, as the American music establishment has resolutely looked to Europe, not only for its music, but, until recently, for its musicians and conductors. (Until the First World War, the lingua franca of most American orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, was German.)
Composers reacted to the challenge of modernism with a variety of strategies: atonalism, dissonance, minimalism, silence, electronic music, computer music, and currently The New Complexity. Increasingly isolated at universities or conservatories, composers wrote music for each other, while berating the concert audience for its lack of enthusiasm. Those who sought a broader audience were often ostracized for "commercialism," or even "pandering to the mob." Within the sequestered world of new concert music, bitter feuds raged.
To explain the general rejection, composers developed a mythology. One aspect was the "time lag," the notion that past audiences often rejected new music and only time and repeated hearing converted hostility into respect and affection. In fact, audiences enthusiastically greeted most new music up to the early 20th century; the public often treated composers like today's rock stars, and avidly packed concert halls to hear their works performed. Another myth frequently invoked is that music attractive to audiences is "commercial," written for money and therefore tainted. If such a taint disqualifies music from greatness, we would have to banish Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini, Verdi, Brahms, Wagner, and just about every other successful composer of the past from our current pantheon. Given the broad spectrum typical of American culture, no composer has found success without dipping into the commercial cauldron. Considering the careers of George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Kurt Weill, Andre Previn, Duke Ellington, and Leonard Bernstein, one might conclude that America's chief patrons of classical music were Broadway and Hollywood.
8. Take the A Train �� and Don't Come Back!
Near the turn of the century, composers, musicians, and patrons agonized over the lack of an "American" music. Unlike Russia and Central Europe, where composers were delving through folk music for a distinctive classical style, musical tastemakers in the United States firmly �� angrily �� rejected the locally developed folk music.
On the cusp of the jazz revolution, ragtime set Americans' feet tapping in ways that appeared unseemly to many social arbiters. The music seduced proper young ladies from practicing Czerny exercises and instead swaying to "The Maple Leaf Rag." James Reese Europe's black Clef Club musicians monopolized society gigs in New York and accompanied the wildly popular white dance team, Vernon and Irene Castle. The Germans who dominated the American music scene before the First World War hoped to convert the likes of Scott Joplin to more elevated styles. (I wrote about this in an article, "Fantasies in Black and White: Radical Chic vs. Jim Crow.")
The American concert music establishment reacted with dismay and rage to jazz, which could have been welcomed as the much�sought American music. Certainly its roots tapped American soil and its sound was suffused with a volatile African�American rhythm. While many European composers folded jazz into their music, and while jazz itself was capturing European cafe society, the American concert world turned its back on this new music. It was black. It welled up from humble people barely two generations from slavery. It filled dance halls and speakeasies. Definitely not concert hall material.
As it developed in the shadows, jazz flowered most luxuriantly just as all avant�gardes did, in obscurity. (I discussed this in "When Media Coverage Hurts: The Case of Jazz.")
Since the 1960s, jazz has become a familiar presence on college campuses. Welcomed at first through well�attended, lucrative concerts by Dave Brubeck and other stars, jazz also moved into music departments as part of the civil rights revolution. (I published an essay about this in Popular Music and Society called "Jazz Goes to College: Has Academic Status Served the Art?")
9. Music in the air ... everywhere
Just as the development of automobiles heralded profound social changes, so the diffusion of music by recordings and radio brought on a cultural revolution. It is difficult today to imagine a world so silent that a Sunday brass band concert attracted the entire population to the town square simply to listen and enjoy. This was a world so bereft of musical resources that owning a cheap piano and picking out a few tunes on it constituted an evening's high entertainment. Such was the world barely 100 years ago.
This was also a world grossly cleft by class, race, gender, and ethnicity. Here, a small elite literally called the tune, its tastemaking power augmented by wealth and prestige. It supported the operas and orchestras, dictated programs and personnel, and took over concert and opera venues as non�profit organizations to preserve them from assault from more popular entertainments. Women were in the forefront of founding and nurturing local musical organizations, but seldom sat on the board of directors.
The first knell of this establishment's decline sounded from a humble device �� the player piano. Fitted with a coin�collecting slot, the player piano, for the first time in human history, allowed ordinary people to choose the kind of music they wished to hear. And the first American contribution to world music soon followed �� ragtime. This music, like all American contributions to world music, originated in the black community.
Electricity powered the revolution in sound, introducing democracy into a realm that previously had been managed by elites. Throughout this century and into the foreseeable future, musical innovation marches to the beat of electrical impulse. Electricity enabled the earliest recordings and all subsequent devices for disseminating music. But it was far more than a simple enabler; it also profoundly influenced musical styles and performances. The sound engineer is the unseen �� often unsung �� creative collaborator no less for the composer than for the musician.
The orchestra and chamber ensemble base their claim to prestige on the absence of electronics; they produce, so they say, "hand�made" works, in a world dominated by machine�made, cookie�cutter products. They pose as reminders of a more refined, purer past. But in order to meet skyrocketing expenses, orchestras must market themselves as diligently as any business. In the absence of the music director, who is mostly elsewhere on other lucrative podiums, the business manager or executive director runs the show.
In structure, the orchestra remains unchanged since reaching its developmental apogee in the late 19th century. From its formal "uniform" to its stage seating arrangement, to its demand for silent attention, nothing has changed. We do not have recordings to assess the musical quality of those historic ensembles, but other evidence indicates that classical music performance is far superior today. Like all other musical activity, the contemporary orchestra is also affected by the electronic revolution. How else to assess quality than by listening to and comparing recordings of various ensembles? When orchestras record, they are no less dependent than rock combos on that unseen artist, the sound engineer, manipulating his multiple dials and blinking lights. Increasingly, the result is a standardized product. Faced with high recording fees demanded by major orchestras, record companies are dipping into their archives to remaster old recordings by conductors and orchestras featuring a distinctive sound.
10. Is there an encore?
After almost a century of stasis, the concert music world seems to be in flux. Harassed by financial problems and stung by reduced public subsidies, the "serious" music world is examining new options. At Lincoln Center, Wynton Marsalis has established a flourishing jazz program. The summer festival there in 1997 included a seven�day exploration of Latin music at Avery Fisher Hall, and also "a harmolodic celebration" of jazz artist Ornette Coleman, including the New York Philharmonic performing Coleman's and others' American classics.
Even more prophetic is a proliferation of new concert music that performers wade into with gusto while audiences cheer. In May 1997, the Bang on a Can Festival celebrated its 10th anniversary with a fresh feast of new sounds. Founded in 1987 by a trio of Yale Music School graduates with a single event, a 12�hour "marathon" in a grungy downtown space, Bang on a Can ten years later was so established that a few attacked it as stodgy. But its wide�open aesthetic continues to gather respect.
Right from the beginning, Bang on a Can welcomed all sorts of new musical currents, and presented them in a friendly, casual setting ... no trappings, no ritual, no dicta from on high of what was "good" and what was not. Instead, the group stressed variety and accessibility. A versatile six�person combo, the "unstoppable, sexy and loud" Bang on a Can All Stars, have toured the U.S., including such unlikely new music venues as Tucson, Lincoln (Nebraska), and Hartford. This group also spent three months touring Europe, three weeks in Israel, and dashed Down Under to Adelaide. Last summer, they were part of the Yale Music School's Summer Festival in Norfolk, Connecticut.
Now, "out of the museum and into your face" comes the Spit Orchestra, boasting that "it doesn't look like an orchestra, it doesn't play like an orchestra, and it doesn't play the music that orchestras play." Indeed! Overflow crowds trekked to far west 19th Street for back�to�back performances by this spirited ensemble. The musicians looked like Hell's Angels, but, on the down beat, they demonstrated the results of decades of training, first�rate schooling, and broad experience, playing difficult new music with discipline and panache.
Beneath the official concert scene, organizations like Bang on a Can have been burrowing for years, bringing fresh sounds to a new generation. Every year, more of them are breaking through into the daylight, attracting new audiences with music they can not only appreciate but enjoy.
As "serious" music organizations face decline, they are forced to consider new music and new ways of presenting it. Lincoln Center already sponsors a jazz season and the Los Angeles Music Center began last fall. Pop�jazz musician Bobby McFerrin is breathing new life into the venerable St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. In both Los Angeles and San Francisco, new young conductors are breaking out of the traditional repertoire amid widespread interest. The first real changes in more than 100 years are about to unfold in the concert music scene. Will they work?
Alice Goldfarb Marquis is the author of "Art Lessons: Learning from the Rise and Fall of Public Arts Funding" , and a forthcoming biography of Marcel Duchamp, among other works.
Alistair Cooke's Letter From America (BBC)